My downloads don't look like books

Which is fine that they don't, but the real problem is they won't open. Every video showing how to download and open mods have files that look like a stack of colored books. Whenever I follow the exact same steps, however, mine look like a piece of paper.

I'm not sure what it is I'm doing wrong. Here's my process. If anyone could correct me, it would be appreciated.

1) Download selected mod
2) save mod under .minecraft -> saves
3) open Minecraft

One of the videos I watched discussed 'unzipping' or 'extracting' the files, but my computer won't allow that option for these files in particular. If there's something else I'm missing, please let me know!

While your post was unclear, I think I managed to piece together your problem: You do not have WinRAR installed.
Download it here http://www.rarlab.com/rar/wrar420.exe
From there you should be able to follow tutorials.
Putting it in saves doesn't do anything. Saves is where your worlds are stored. In order to install a mod you need to drag the files inside the zipped folder into the minecraft.jar stored in your bin.
How to install mods: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gc25V1PzCqc

After you download the mod (some mods that is) you need to install them in to the proper directories. A good example is with ModLoader. You open the modloader download folder (It may be a ZIP folder) so that you can see all the .class files. Then you go to your .minecraft folder, open up the bin, and open your minecraft.jar. From there you will copy all of the .class files from the modloader folder and paste them in to your minecraft.jar. They wont look at books as I remember. World saves are easier. Same with textures. All you need to do is drag the folder from your downloads in to your saves folder.